


The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

by kmo



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Suicidal Thoughts, canon typical cannibalism, post-S3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-07-27 08:24:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7610788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kmo/pseuds/kmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years after the fall, Bedelia finds Will Graham in Argentina. Hannibal made them into demi-gods, but can they help each other become human again?</p><p>The Bride was made for the Creature. Not the Doctor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Um, so this is the Wildelia story hardly anybody was asking for. It's the story I would pitch for s4 if I was in the Hannibal writers' room. I take both the past hannigram and bedannibal relationships very seriously but I lean toward Bedelia's interpretation of them as "harmful but irresistible," with an emphasis on the harmful. 
> 
> But if you ever wanted to see Hannibal's best beloveds try to break free of his darkness, this is the story for you.

He drifts from sleep to waking and back again, a rowboat being rocked against the tide. He is aware of his skin resting against soft sheets, hazy sunlight through gauze curtains, and the smell of something tropical and sweet in the air.

He sweats and tosses and turns. Sometimes his wrists are bound, sometimes free. A cool compress on his forehead, chips of ice in his mouth to calm him. And when that is not enough, the sharp brief kiss of a needle in his arm that sends him off into sweet, black oblivion.

And through all of this, a voice. A woman’s voice, he thinks, poured into his ears like dark Tupelo honey. It’s luxurious but rough, like rubbing velvet against the nap. The voice speaks to him, asks him questions. She talks to him about Jack and Alana, Molly and Walter, names that feel both familiar and forgotten. She asks him about sailing the muddy ribbon of the Mississippi alongside his father and his first Mardi Gras in New Orleans. She talks to him about his dogs. They talk about dogs a lot.

He feels himself suspended between the abyss and the light. The abyss is dark and warm, like a womb, and he longs to go back there. The light is bright and cold, so strange and wrong. To cross on through would be to walk on legs made of knives and he is very frightened.

But the woman whose face he never sees has caught him in her net of words, her siren voice too alluring to resist as she drags him toward rebirth.


	2. Buenos Aires I

_"If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning."_ \- William Blake

* * *

 

A warm, wet tongue laps him eagerly. Will cracks open his eyes to see a golden head resting against his own.

His throat is parched, his lips cracked, but he smiles. “Hey, Winston.” Will runs his fingers behind Winston’s ears, earning him another affectionate lick. He sits up and soon realizes that Winston is not the only blonde in the room. Dressed from head to toe in a long black dress as if she might at any moment rise to give a tango lesson is Bedelia Du Maurier, demurely perched in an armchair.

“Hello, Will,” she says. Her voice is low and steady, the soothing hypnotic burr receding from his dreamspace.

“Hello, Bedelia,” he says cautiously, unsure of where he is or why she’s here. He scans the room, but its airy Beaux-Arts ceiling and pale feminine furnishings tell him little. The back of his neck is slick with sweat, as if he’s just awoken from a fever dream. He moves to sit up and get out of bed, but the sudden rush of movement leaves him lightheaded and dizzy.

“Best not to overdo it at first,” Bedelia says, rising stiffly to pour him a glass of water from a pitcher. She hands it to him and he gulps it down. “Easy,” she cautions.

“Thanks.”

“How do you feel?”

“Like shit to be honest.”

“Some of the substances he had you on fostered chemical dependency. I kept you sedated for the worst of it.” Bedelia did not bother to explain who _he_ was; between the two of them there was only ever one _he_ and his name was Hannibal.

“So you’ve been supervising my detox.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“For how long?”

“A little over two weeks. Any remaining feelings of addiction will be psychological, not physical.”

Will swallows the last of the water she gave him. The words _addiction_ and _dependency_ circle round in his head, he finds himself seeking comfort in the softness of Winston’s fur. “Bedelia, what happened to me?”

“What do you think happened to you?” she asks, cautiously, mysteriously.

He’d never forgotten the way talking to her was like communicating through echo-location, an ornate verbal game of  _Battleship_. “Can we cut to the chase for once?”

Bedelia’s face remains rigid, impassive. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Will sighs and closes his eyes. He swims upstream through the river of his consciousness. Recent memories float by him, but they seem flimsy, fragile, tinted with an overly rosy glow. Images of himself and Hannibal dancing cheek to cheek, holding hands at the opera, making lovestruck eyes at one another across a dining table heavy with food. They are treacly sweet, all the better to hide a poison, and he doesn’t trust them. He swims farther and farther back until at last he hits something real, something solid. It’s so heartbreaking and horrifying, he knows it must be true.

“Hannibal and I…we slew the Dragon. Together. I was covered in blood, black in the moonlight. It was my Becoming, it was beautiful…I became what Hannibal always knew me to be,” he tells her, voice breaking, tears pooling in his eyes. “I Became…and I held him in my arms…and then I pushed us both to our deaths.”

Bedelia nods somberly, and hands him a newspaper. The date reads 2017. “That was over two years ago.”

“And in the meantime?”

“You rejected your Becoming…and Hannibal vetoed that rejection. As he is want to do.”

The candy bright memories swirl in his brain like a carousel and he understands. “He gave me the Lydia Fell special, didn’t he? Brainwashed me into becoming the perfect Murder Husband.”

“Yes. My idea…technically.”

Will glances down at the paper. It’s in Spanish and his is awfully rusty. “Where are we?”

“Argentina.”

“And where is Hannibal?”

“Close.” Bedelia’s eyes flick toward the window half-occluded by wooden shutters. “Too close.”

“Does he know you have me?”

“I hope not. I’ve been very careful.”

Will scratches his chin, surprised to find the lack of growth there. He realizes suddenly with embarrassment that Bedelia must have kept his beard trimmed, must have seen to all of his bodily needs while he was detoxing. He finds himself blushing under her cool gaze. Embarrassment makes him prickly. “I don’t remember being very kind to you the last time we spoke. Why bother to save me, Bedelia? Am I just some pawn in the twisted chess match you and Hannibal play with each other—I was his piece and now you want to make me yours?”

“You’ve shown yourself to be no one’s game piece but your own.” Bedelia’s eyes turn wintery, cold as Superior in January. Her face is sterner, the cheekbones sharper than he remembers, her blonde hair pulled back tightly away from her face in a thick twist. “I came to rescue you, Will, because no one came to rescue me. And I wish someone had,” she tells him, slowly and deliberately.

He doesn’t know what to make of what she has to say—gossamer lies warped with fragile truth are par for the course with Bedelia. “I still don’t understand why I’m here,” he begins.

“Best for you to rest,” she says, voice smooth and soothing, as she takes the empty glass from his hand and sets it on the bedside table. “Come, Winston, it’s time for a walk.”

Winston trots behind Bedelia, tail wagging, and follows her out the door.

 _Traitor,_  Will thinks.

*

“You’re not a prisoner here, Will,” Bedelia tells him over dinner one evening when he finally feels like he has any type of appetite. It’s vegetable soup and dark bread, the plainest fare, a stark contrast from dinners with Hannibal. “You can return to him, if that’s what you really want. I only ask you give me notice.”

He blows on his soup and takes a sip, figuring Bedelia didn’t go to all this effort to poison him now. “I don’t want to go back to him.”

“No?” Bedelia asks, the undercurrent of a sting in her otherwise neutral words. “You’ve finally learned your lesson?”

“Have you?”

A tight half-smile tenses around Bedelia’s mouth but she says nothing, continuing to eat her meal. She eats with little pleasure or appetite, Will notices, although the soup itself is very good.

He has so many jumbling thoughts and no one to express them to, save her, and so he talks. “I thought he wanted me for myself…my truest self. Why turn me into someone else?”

“As your truest self, you tried to end your own life. And his. Hannibal would rather have half of you than none of you.” Bedelia sighs. “Perhaps in time you would have accepted this _vita nuova_ Hannibal created for you and the drugs would no longer have been necessary.”

Will pushes aside his soup, suddenly having lost his appetite. Those rose-tinted, tainted memories, two years with Hannibal, rush back to him, a waist-high swell flooding his mind. They’re his and not his. It’s him and not him. “It’s not like I did anything with him I wouldn’t have done anyway. I…I don’t think I killed anyone,” Will hesitates; he is not entirely sure on this point, “but I just gave in to being with him, no regrets, no nagging conscience.” He doesn’t know why he feels he can tell her the next part, but if there is anyone not in a position to judge him, it’s Bedelia. “It would be easier to live with if he hadn’t made me so goddamn happy.”

Bedelia shakes her head, bemused. “Hannibal would make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. That’s his way.”

He couldn’t agree more. There’s a heaviness in his chest…betrayal and disappointment, anger. It feels a lot like heartburn. “Still…I feel…” he begins and stops.

“What do you feel?” Bedelia watches him, hungry curiosity in her gaze.

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do.”

Will laughs bitterly, pushes himself away from the table. It’s that same haughty all-knowing, all-seeing arrogance of hers. It scents the air like peroxide, burning his nostrils. “Why don’t you just tell me how I feel, since you’re so sure.”

“In my experience, it’s best for you to come to this kind of revelation on your own. The insight will mean more to you if you do.”

“You weren’t afraid to put words in my mouth…in my head…before,” he spits back at her. “The whole dog and pony show about Chilton. So tell me, Bedelia, you’re the self-appointed expert, _how do I feel?_ ”

She’s quiet, neutral, but underneath her silence Will can sense that slow burning anger of hers, simmering away on low heat. “I wouldn’t claim to be an expert on your feelings. I haven’t your _gift_ …my insights are based on observation. I have not had much opportunity to observe you.”

She really isn’t going to give him the satisfaction. They’ve run up against a verbal brick wall.

After what feels like an eternity of uncomfortable silence, she says, “Perhaps you want me to say it, because then you will not have to be burdened with saying it yourself.”

“Perhaps,” he says with a wince. Winston whimpers at his feet.

“Very well.” Bedelia sets aside her spoon and smooths her dinner napkin with an inhuman quirk, a clockwork woman. “You feel violated.”

Tears prick at his eyes and he sniffs them away. He focuses his gaze on the spot of sunlight hitting the wood of the table. “What I did with Hannibal here in Buenos Aires is no different than what you did with him in Florence.”

“It is altogether the same and altogether different. I chose to go. You did not.”

He meets Bedelia’s eyes, which suddenly seem very, very blue. “I nearly chose to go with him before. I might have chosen to go this time.”

“But this time around he never asked you. He chose for you.”

It hurt, the truth he didn’t wish to face. It stung. Far more, far deeper than the scars on his stomach. An injury more personal than the death of Abigail. “It’s a violation,” he echoes.

“Yes, a grave one.”

Her sympathy makes him queasy and uncomfortable. “How did he violate you?”

Bedelia glances up at him, a fractured, broken look in her eyes, and then she breaks away to dip her spoon into her soup.

“Silence means you agree, Bedelia,” he presses.

Her eyes meet his again and a twisted smile graces her lips, which remain stubbornly sealed. “Eat your soup, Will. It’s getting cold,” is all she has to say.

*

In bed that night he can’t sleep. The sheets twist around his legs as he tosses and turns, sweating through his undershirt. The mattress which had once seemed so cool and inviting now feels hot and clammy and uncomfortable. He is afraid to close his eyes, afraid of what…and who…waits for him there.

Winston, he thinks. Having Winston will help. He always slept best with his pack around him. Now Winston is all that remains of it. Will swings his legs over the slide of the bed and pads into the living room to fetch Winston.

What he sees is an unsettling mixture of the domestic and the grotesque.

Bedelia sits on the sofa, fingers gliding absently over her iPad. Winston is spread out beside her, head nestled in her lap—or what is left of it. He can see the pale white length of her right leg extend behind the hem of her dark dress, but on the left side there is…nothing. A flesh-colored prosthesis rests against the arm of the sofa, the broken off piece of a life-size Barbie doll.

Bedelia scratches Winston behind the ears, a tiny hint of a smile tugging at her lips. He knows that look, that gesture. He’s worn it on his own face. So much easier to take comfort in the affection of an animal, who can’t judge you, see you, pity you.

Winston’s ears perk up, alert to the smell of his master. Bedelia turns her head; their eyes lock and she knows that he knows.

She’s silent, waiting for him to speak. The first words out of his mouth are not the obvious ones.

“Did you ever have a dog?”

He can tell he’s surprised her. “When I was a girl we had an Irish setter.” She begins to run her hand along the long red-gold length of Winston’s fur. “Salomé—Sally,” she answers.

He eases himself into an empty armchair opposite her. “What happened to her?”

“She died, of course.” Bedelia shoots him one of her patented haughty glances, the kind that implies his IQ just dropped by about fifty points. “Hit by a car when I was away for my first year at Miss Porter’s. My parents didn’t tell me until I returned home for the summer; they didn’t wish to distract me from my studies.”

“And you never thought to get another dog?”

“No. They ruin the carpet,” Bedelia says, though in her words Will hears an echo of the waspish woman her mother must have been. She turns back to her iPad. Since they seem to have exhausted the topic of dogs for the moment and Bedelia is unwilling to discuss the obvious, silence fills the room again, heavy and viscous as a fog.

“So he did violate you after all, Bedelia.”

“Of course he did.” Her words hit him hard and heavy, a lead weight sinking into the ocean.

“He finally took something from you.”

“You must be pleased. I had this coming, according to you,” she says, a serrated edge in every syllable. He can feel her anger ignite around him, the bright blue flame of a gas range leaping up to lick the copper bottom of a pot. “But perhaps you feel he didn’t take enough.”

He’s confused—stale righteousness mixes with an uneasy compassion, leaving him green and seasick. He tries to remember, he _has_ to remember. “Was I there?” he asks.

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it does.”

“The man who came to see me two years ago wouldn’t have minded a taste of me. Meat was back on the menu, you said. _My_ meat.”

She’s teasing him, torturing him, dangling glimpses of the truth in front of him, twisting them and turning them, a prism reflecting his worst fears. This wasn’t supposed to happen to her—it wasn’t _his_ design. Why did no one ever listen? He launches himself from the chair, hands tearing at his hair. “You were _supposed_ to leave!”

“I tried to leave!” she shouts back, her intensity matching his own. Her icy expression cracks open, tears of sadness and rage streak down her cheeks. “I didn’t even make it out of my own driveway before that trained falcon of his swooped down and took me in her talons.”

She gathers up a pair of aluminum crutches and affixes them to her elbows, rising from the sofa in a tiny tornado of metal. She hobbles over to where he stands, making sure he can see every ripple of her bicep, hear every labored breath it takes her to perform the simple task of walking, plucking at his compassion and prodding at his empathy. “You weren’t at dinner, Will. His hold on you was too fragile—he couldn’t risk it. But you may as well have been. The feast was in your honor,” she spits.

“Bedelia,” he says, reaching for her. His hand whiffs through empty air as she coldly turns him away.

“If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to take a bath.”

She leaves him there, clatter of crutches retreating down the hall. Her ability to walk left something to be desired, but Bedelia could still slam a door with enough force to shake the plaster walls of the apartment.

He collapses on the sofa, head in his hands, mentally exhausted from holding back a tide of guilt and horror and god knows only what else. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Bedelia’s prosthesis, an elegant and horrifying piece of machinery. It reminds him of those mannequin legs you see in a department store displaying ladies’ pantyhose, bizarrely erotic. He shudders, wondering where on earth that last bit came from.

He flicks on Bedelia’s iPad and finds the bookmark she has made for Tattlecrime.com. “Murder Husbands' Wedding Luau” is still listed on the sidebar as the site’s most popular story. Against his better judgment, he presses his forefinger down on the link. Images of a half-eaten feast glistening in the candlelight, of Bedelia being carried out of her home in Jack’s arms, his grey overcoat covering a blood-stained evening gown, pop up in the header—Freddie must have paid someone a fortune for them. Freddie must have _made_ a fortune off of them.

He doesn’t read the article; he’s never cared for Freddie’s prose, murder-most-foul by way of Harlequin romance and a hundred percent Grade A bullshit. The pictures are already too much. He shuts off the iPad and closes his eyes, but he can still see Bedelia’s leg roasted upon the table, strewn with roses and palm leaves and passionfruit. No doubt the most beautiful meal Hannibal Lecter had ever made, so different from the impromptu one he had nearly made of him. He can smell the moist, honeyed “pork” and feel the steam rise up, beading upon his face and fogging his glasses and suddenly it is _his_ flesh on the silver platter, _his_ body broken. Bedelia’s horror engulfs him, pours into every orifice and fills his belly and he _doesn’t want to feel_ but he can’t shut it off, he never learned how to shut it off and it’s so much, so fast.

He runs to the sink in the kitchen, arriving just in time to heave up the contents of his stomach. He vomits up his dinner, and then retches again until there is nothing left inside him but bile. No ear this time, just half-digested peas and carrots.

Bent over the sink, an old memory nags at him, working its way to the surface of his consciousness.

_When he was five or six, he used to go to Timmy Jenkins’ house after school and Timmy’s mom would watch them until his dad’s shift ended. He liked Mrs. Jenkins, her broad lap and her careworn face and graying chestnut hair. She was nice to him, used to hug him and tell him what a good boy he was. The closest thing to a mother he ever had, Will supposes._

_Mrs. Jenkins was a widow and Will got the sense they were very poor, even poorer than Will and his dad. Their house was small and very plain and the wallpaper was faded and beginning to peel in places. The only nice thing Mrs. Jenkins’ owned was a glass ballerina music box that had been a gift to her from her late husband. She kept it high on a shelf in the pokey little parlor._

_Timmy was his only friend. His best friend. But he wasn’t always a good boy. He liked to run and jump around—he didn’t care if he got in trouble and had to stay in for recess or get sent to the principal’s office. And so one rainy afternoon, Timmy convinced him they should play tag in the house while his mom was out. They weren’t supposed to run in the house—Mrs. Jenkins scolded them if they did. But Timmy was his friend and he wanted to play with him. So he did it._

_Timmy was “it.” He chased Will round and round the little house, Will giggling all the way. When they ran through the parlor, Timmy bumped into the bookshelf, sending Mrs. Jenkins’ glass ballerina crashing to the floor. Her leg broke off. Will remembers staring at it, asking Timmy to get some glue so they could fix it, but they didn’t have any. Then they heard the sound of the front door opening. Timmy ran and hid in his room, leaving Will to be discovered by Mrs. Jenkins, tears streaking his cheeks, shards of the glass ballerina in his small fists. “I’m sorry,” he told her, even though it really wasn’t his fault._

_He’d never forgotten the way she looked at him then, the way her kind face clouded over with disgust._

**_“You thoughtless, reckless boy.”_ **

He never had a friend like Timmy again. Well, not until recently.

*

He finds Bedelia in the flat’s single bedroom sitting in front of a vanity table with dainty spindled legs. Her back is toward him, and she’s covered in some kind of sheer white robe, plucking tiny golden pins out of her hair and depositing them in small porcelain dish. Her hair slips down from its bun in a bouncy blonde spiral; he has the sudden impulse to touch it. “Yes?” she asks, barely glancing over her shoulder as she picks up a silver hairbrush, the old-fashioned kind, with real bristles.

“I brought you a peace offering.” He plunks a bottle of scotch he found down on her vanity along with two glasses.

“A peace offering of my own whisky.” Her tone is less than impressed, but her hand is already reaching for her glass.

He shrugs and pours each of them a thumb-width’s of scotch. Bedelia blinks at him expectantly and he makes hers a double. They sip but do not toast.

“I was righteous and reckless. Twitchy—I was too impatient to come up with a better plan.”

“You forgot little,” Bedelia murmurs into her scotch.

“That is entirely subjective.” He pinches the brim of his nose; she’s impossible. “What I’m trying to say is, I should have listened to you.”

Bedelia takes a few more meditative sips before saying, “I did not make it easy for you to listen to me.”

He supposes that is as close as they will ever get to any kind of reconciliation.

Bedelia has given up her hairbrush in favor of the rocks glass. Will picks up the task that she abandoned, tentatively running the brush through the length of her hair. Bedelia cocks her right eyebrow, but does not ask him to stop, content for the moment to drink. He can’t think of why he’s doing it or why she’s letting him—God knows Molly would have laughed herself silly if he’d ever tried to brush her hair. Only that Hannibal must have done it for her and the fine edges between himself and Hannibal blurred long ago.

The combination of bath time, booze, and brushing seems to have relaxed Bedelia. Leaning back into his touch, but maintaining eye contact with her glass, she says, “He let me pick, you know. Out of all the recipes he sent me, he asked me to choose. Of course, I was strategic. It was between the Kalua Roasted Pork Leg and the Plum-Glazed Breast of Pheasant.” Her hand goes to her breast, trembling as she pulls her robe closed. “I still wonder if I should have gone with Breast of Pheasant. It’s much easier to live without a breast than a leg—hundreds of thousands of women do. But I just couldn’t bear the thought of him cutting so close to my heart.”

Her shoulders shudder a little, and beneath the curtain of her hair, he knows she’s crying. Hot tears of shame—she’s ashamed to have picked sentimentality over reason. The rawness of it rubs salt in his own wounds. So very like Hannibal to make a person complicit in their own victimization, one of his very favorite things to do.

He’s finished now and briefly caresses a lock of Bedelia’s hair with his bare hand, unsure of how to comfort her, uncertain if his comfort is even welcome. He replaces the brush on the table and goes to sit on the edge of the bed with his drink.

“He put me to sleep for the amputation…my understanding is that was not typically part of the Ripper’s modus operandi.”

“He still respects you,” Will says clinically.

Bedelia gives a polite snort and drains her glass.

“How did you escape him?”

She smiles to herself, the lazy smile of a jungle cat. “I ripped open his throat with an oyster fork.”

He smiles, too, at the image—the poetry of her fork besting Hannibal’s knife. “Your relationship finally became passionate. Shame you didn’t manage to kill him.”

“I was drugged to the gills and missing my left leg. I did my best,” she says pointedly. Oh, he’d nearly forgotten how impressive her verbal backhand could be. She always returned every serve lobbed in her direction, the Serena Williams of conversation. No wonder Hannibal was so fond of her.

Bedelia has finished her drink and he can tell the scotch has made her more morose than mellow. Her eyes are wet and dark and stormy—they remind him all too much of the Atlantic and the watery grave he had hoped to make there. “He had curled my hair and done my makeup. Diamonds the size of robin’s eggs dripped from my ears. I was wearing an evening gown, the neckline slit practically down to my navel,” she says, shaking her head, finding it vulgar.

“During dinner, he came to fill my wine glass, and he told me I had never looked more beautiful.” She’s crying openly now, tears slipping down her cheeks, not bothering to wipe them away. “He looked at me with such love and tenderness—a love he’d never shown me before, not in all the years I’d known him. And that is when I knew I was not likely to live to see the dessert course.”

“I know that look,” he says. Hannibal had looked at him that way before he’d gutted him. And he’d returned that look, just moments before the fall.

“I’m sure you do.”

All he can do is nod. He’d ask for more to drink, but there’s not enough booze in the world for either of them at this point.

Bedelia dabs at her eyes with a white square of tissue. Her face struggles to assume its usual marble-like cast, but it’s too late, her mask is already thoroughly cracked and he’ll never be able to unsee the vulnerable woman beneath it. “I should have told you the last time we spoke—the only way out of the Inferno is through,” she says in that unique way she has, every word falling from her lips like a sybil’s prophecy. If only he’d bothered to heed them before.

“We’re not through yet, though, are we, Bedelia?”

Her gaze wanders, looking through the closed shutters as if able to sense Hannibal’s presence out there in the darkness. “No. Not yet.”

She sets aside the tissue she has been worrying into shreds in her lap and smooths out the chiffon of her robe. With effort, she rises from her tiny round-backed chair and begins to hop toward the bed where he sits, bracing herself against the furniture. It’s odd to watch her do it—the elegant and restrained Bedelia Du Maurier hopping around on one leg—but she manages it in a way that is more athletic than ungainly. When she reaches the edge of the bed, he takes her hand and guides her down so that she may sit beside him. He does not know what has brought this on, the sudden desire to be close to him, but he can feel the warmth of her right leg pressed against his left and smell her perfume—that heady, tropical scent he remembers. Maybe it’s the drink and maybe it’s something else, but the surface of his skin vibrates, feels heated in her proximity, his very molecules reaching out to meld with hers.

She takes his hand and presses it against her right thigh, her _good_ thigh. She looks up at him, eyes a bright clear blue and full of questions. It makes her look so young—an adult Alice fallen again through the Looking Glass. “Is your gift only good for seeing inside the minds of the criminally insane—or can you feel what I am feeling right now?” she asks.

It never occurs to him _not_ to accept her invitation. He feels Bedelia all around him—he’s been feeling her all evening—the woman who lost her leg and the girl who lost her dog. She’s opening herself to him and he knows what she wants; it sings to him pure and clear as a bell. “You want me to touch you.”

She rests her hand on the back of his neck and begins playing with the curls at his nape. “Do you remember what I told you about touch?”

“It makes us who we are.” His hand slides up the curve of her waist with a mind of its own, tiny tentative steps of exploration. “Hannibal was the last person to touch you.”

“And you.”

“And me,” he concurs, letting his palm spread out against the small of her back, nearly able to span the width of it, she’s so tiny. “You want to be touched by someone other than Hannibal, but he’s made you unfit for human hands.”

Her hands brush his shoulders, a whisper of a massage. “We’re both unfit.”

He doesn’t know who initiates it, but there’s a current pulling him toward Bedelia and pushing her toward him. Their collision is inevitable and has been since that moment in his dungeon cell, the moment she believed him.

Their lips touch briefly, sweetly, almost chastely. Bedelia savors it, mulls it carefully. “The Bride was made for the Creature, Will. Not the Doctor,” she tells him breathlessly before capturing his mouth with her own and pressing it open in passionate discovery.

There is a rush of lips covering lips, tongues tasting tongues, and fingers through hair. It’s a good kiss.

Bedelia suddenly stops and pulls away, confused.

“What?” he asks.

She touches her face and then his. “I’ve never kissed a man with a beard before. It’s…different.”

Barely five seconds after kissing her and he’s already regretting what he’s gotten himself into. “Different bad?” he asks, defensive.

She shakes her head slightly, letting her blonde curls rustle in the most enticing way. “Just different,” she says, kissing him again, slower and more deliberate this time. He eases back, letting her set the pace, and _oh_ it’s deep and probing and his cock stiffens against his leg, enjoying the long-drawn out sensuality of it.

They come up for air again and he delights in the rosy-red of her lips, the way her enlarged pupils turn her eyes a starry blue. Almost shyly, Bedelia shrugs off her robe to reveal freckled shoulders and a nightgown of the same gauzy translucent material. Her nipples are hard and he can see their pinkness through the fabric, and his dick swells again at the sight of them, straining against his tight cotton shorts. Bedelia pulls at the laces at the front of her gown, revealing her breasts, lush and firm and ripe, two white peaches. He takes this as an invitation; he cups them, a perfect handful, and begins to run the pads of his thumbs over both of her nipples.

She doesn’t cry out, but he can hear her breath catch and see her lips part; she must be sensitive there. He tugs a bit harder, enjoying the way her skin flushes and her back arches into his touch—her pleasure bleeds into his own, and it’s leaving a damp spot on the front of his shorts. He bends his head and takes her left nipple inside his mouth, runs lazy circles around it with his tongue until it is stiff and red. He sucks hard and her body gives a little shudder.

He nuzzles the soft white skin between the valley of her breasts, plants light kisses there. _I’m glad you didn’t give him your breast_ he tries to tell her, kissing the words in an empath’s version of Morse code. He doesn’t say them aloud because they are, well, a stupidly male thing to say, he thinks.

His lips travel higher across her breasts, toward her clavicle and collarbone, as his hands explore lower, feeling the hourglass curve of her waist, the small swell of her hips. Her hands do the same, spreading against his shoulders and squeezing his biceps, mapping every inch of him. But when his explorations veer into the uncharted territory of her left thigh, her hand reaches out and grasps him hard about the wrist, stopping him before he can reach that most wounded place.

“Not here?” he asks, forehead pressed against hers, so close he can smell the saline of her tears.

Bedelia shakes her head and places his offending hand between her thighs, right against the hot damp of her sex.

_Well, that was direct._

Will teases her a little through the silk and lace, prodding at her wetness and pressing the heel of his hand against her clit, which earns him a breathy gasp. He slips his hand inside her panties and slowly begins to fuck her with his fingers; one at first, the slickness of her encouraging him to quickly add a second. He’d always been very good at pleasing women, not that there had been very many. His gift gave him something of an advantage, he supposes, and his psychology made him much more comfortable giving pleasure than receiving it. Molly had been loud in bed, rewarding him with deep throaty moans, while Margot had hissed obscenities under her breath, urging him not to stop. Bedelia doesn’t make a sound—she’s the quietest lover he’s ever had, but he’d never had a woman be more _present_.

She’s taken him in hand now. Her thumb swipes at the precum at the head of his cock and he arches forward with a moan. She looks up at him, girlish blush coloring her cheeks, like she’s trying to hold in a laugh.

“What is it now?” he asks, defaulting to the defensive again.

Her lips part enticingly, pink and soft. She gives him a firm stroke with both hands. “You’re…not little.”

“No, I’m not.” It’s the stupidest response imaginable and now he’s blushing, too. It’s amazing he can form a sentence at all the way she’s looking at him, full of raw desire, as she strokes his cock perfectly in time to meet his own thrusts. He pushes harder against her clit and curls his fingers inside her until he finds that spongy ridge of flesh. He groans; it won’t be long for either of them now. A simple, perfunctory release, that’s all this is.

Bedelia pauses, considering, and then removes her hand. He whimpers aloud, cock twitching forward of its own accord, desperate for her touch. He withdraws his own hand; he is so tempted to taste her, but settles for wiping his fingers against his thigh, the safer choice.

“The nightstand,” she tells him. Inside the top drawer he finds an entire box of condoms, still factory sealed in their original packaging. Bedelia would never be so reckless as to engage in unprotected sex with him. Some skeptical part of his brain wonders exactly how long she has been planning on seducing him, but he’s not really capable of thinking with that part of his anatomy right now. He slips off his shirt and boxers and slips on the condom, the latex a little snug; she hadn’t expected him to be so large and the box was labeled _mediano_. At least, for both their sakes’ it wasn’t _chino_.

Her underwear falls to the floor in a whisper but she’s made no effort to remove her nightgown. Will doesn’t attempt to undress her; he knows she’ll be happier with her silken armor on. Her palms press against his chest and it warms him from within like the soft glow of candlelight. She pays no attention to his scars. Molly had kissed his scars, as if her lips held the power to wish them away. Hannibal had lavished attention on them the way Botticelli might have taken pride in an especially fine bit of brushwork. Bedelia looks right past them, as if she doesn’t expect to see anything different. He hadn’t known until this moment how much he’d longed for someone to do that, a knowledge that nearly makes him cry.

They come together in a melding of skin and lips and need. She’s kissing him, and he’s nudging her thighs apart with his knees and then she freezes, panic shooting through her eyes. Her shoulders start to shake, putting him in mind of a nervy thoroughbred about to buck the paddock.

He presses his lips against her cheek, trying to soothe her. “We don’t have to do this, if you don’t want to…”

“I do want to…I just…” she stops, unable to express how she feels, unwilling to make herself vulnerable, to show weakness.

She is lost. Her own body is a stranger to her, as his mind is a stranger to him. They are both lost.

He wants to give her back to herself. He strokes her hair and kisses her over and over. “Well, then, let me drive tonight, Bedelia. Just this once.”

She closes her eyes and nods. She lets him pull her close and he can hear her shallow breaths deepen, feel her taut muscles unspool beneath his touch. He tumbles her down gently against the soft mattress and he’s heartened when she wraps both arms around his neck. They’re both middle-aged, but there’s something so innocent to this—like it’s both of their first times, Adam and Eve in the garden, minus the serpent. Careful not to touch her left thigh, he positions himself between her legs and thrusts in halfway.

She’s warm and tight around him and it takes all the discipline he has not to take her hard and quick right now. “Good?” he gasps out.

“Yes,” she answers, eyes so blue and wide, a warm water blue he’d never thought them capable of. Her hands tighten their grip around his neck like a rider choking up on the reigns. He obliges, filling her with a grunt.

He moves inside her, short shallow thrusts, trying to find the right rhythm. People said it was like riding a bicycle, but Will knows he’d never ridden a bike like this one, an elegant model with a damaged front wheel.

As if able to read his mind, Bedelia says, “I am not made of porcelain. I won’t shatter beneath your touch.” She wraps her good leg around his waist, urging him to go deeper, a half-second of panic ghosting in her eyes when she realizes she cannot do the same with her left.

He obliges and begins to rock forward into her, harder now, letting instinct guide him. He’s still probably not taking her as hard as she would like and he doubts missionary ranks very high on Bedelia Du Maurier’s list of favorite sex positions. His empathy tells him, though, that this is what she _needs_ right now, even if it’s not necessarily what she wants. His hand snakes through yards of silk to press the heel of his hand down on her clit again, applying pressure until she bucks against him and her walls shudder around him. There’s a tightness in his balls and although the condom has dulled things a bit, he’s not sure how much longer he can last.

It’s suddenly very, very important to him that she comes. “Show me what you need,” he tells her.

Almost reluctantly, her hand joins with his, encouraging him to press harder, and rub against her in steady counter-clockwise circles. Her eyelashes flutter and her breasts flush rose pink and he knows she’s close.

 _She doesn’t like to be seen_ , a baritone voice whispers deep inside his skull.

“Close your eyes, Bedelia. Do what you have to do.”

Obediently, she does. Her lips parting with a soft broken cry, she climaxes, the loudest noise she has made all evening.

His own orgasm overtakes him soon after, thrusting forward and spending inside her warmth in a moment of perfect release.

He staggers to the bathroom in a pleasure-drunk stupor to throw away the condom, muscles feeling like lead, body aching for sleep. He comes back to find Bedelia curled on her side, long tracks of tears streaking her face. He lies against her, wrapping his arms around her to spoon her and she fights the closeness of it, almost on instinct, before giving up and relaxing into his touch.

He sleeps, deep and dreamless, for a change.

*

He wakes in the grey pre-dawn. The street outside their window is still quiet. He turns and sees Bedelia beside him, hands clasped in her lap, staring up at the plaster medallion set into the ceiling. Frankenstein’s Bride and Frankenstein’s Creature, lying side by side. Who is the creature and who is the bride? He’s not as certain as he once was.

“Bedelia?”

“Hmmm?”

“Isn’t it time you told me your plan? I know you wouldn’t leave home without one.”

He knows the words she will say before she’s even said them. He’s known since he saw the part of her that wasn’t there anymore.

“I’m going to kill Hannibal.” Her fingers press against his, a touch-telegraph message from across the veil. “Will you help me?”

He doesn’t even need to think. 

“I’ll help you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize the idea of Will getting the Clarice brainwashing treatment is not a popular idea and may not fit the canon of NBC Hannibal for some people, but I've always been of the opinion anything is possible when it comes to what Hannibal is capable of.
> 
> I apologize for the cliffhanger--I am a slow writer, but I am already at work on chapter 2, so if there is enthusiasm I hope to update soon!


	3. Buenos Aires II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Bluebeard’s Wife you called me once. I’m not Bluebeard’s Wife, Will—I’m Captain Hook. And I can feel Hannibal out there in the night, ticking away like the crocodile, waiting to come for the rest of me.”
> 
> Her dark sense of humor tickles his own. “If you’re Captain Hook, then I’m Captain Ahab. Hannibal’s my white whale.”
> 
> “Yes,” Bedelia confirms with a sincerity that breaks his heart. “And you are his.”

After breakfast and a shower, he joins her on the sofa, a polite foot of upholstery between them. The air in the apartment is still humid with the perfume of sex, but he is no longer sure how to behave himself around her. Bedelia, for her part, has not referred to the actions of the evening before nor made any attempt to flirt with him further. If she’s trying to manipulate him using sex, she’s not doing it very well.

“Is it that you’re not physically capable of killing him yourself?” he asks. “Or is it that you need me as some kind of twisted moral support?”

Her mouth does that tight quirky thing she does when she’s amused. “More the latter than the former.”

“What do you propose?”

“A controlled use of force.” She rises, not ungracefully, and unlocks a wall safe hidden behind a portrait, retrieving a slick black case, the type used for transporting firearms. Bedelia returns to the sofa, flicking open the case to reveal two guns: a standard-issue Glock for him and a small, gold-plated pistol he assumes is for her, complete with mother-of-pearl handgrip. She hands him the larger of the two guns for his inspection. “I believe you carried something similar in the FBI.”

He hefts the familiar weight of it, muscle memory and hours of training taking over, checking the safety and peering through the sight. It’s all there. He looks at the small gun Bedelia is cradling almost lovingly in her lap. “I understand your commitment to the _femme fatale_ aesthetic, Bedelia, but does that antique even fire?”

Bedelia exhales through her nostrils and proceeds to release the cartridge, reload it, and unlock the safety in a practiced motion that would have made his old instructor back at Quantico proud.

“Satisfied?” she asks. “Or do you require a demonstration of my marksmanship?”

He motions for her to put the gun away. “Settle down, Annie Oakley.”

“I used to own a .9mm, but the recoil is too much for me now,” she says, with an offhand gesture toward her leg. “This belonged to my late grandmother.”

“A family heirloom.” Why is he not surprised.

“After her second husband died, she decided to take a cruise around the world. Grandmother always told me no woman should travel without a pistol of her own—foreign men could be so very fresh, she said.”

Will has a sudden image of dear old Grandma Du Maurier (who bore a striking resemblance to Katharine Hepburn) standing at the Cunard Line gangplank with sixteen pieces of matching Italian luggage and the small golden gun tucked in her handbag. Clearly, Bedelia came from a long line of glamorous and dangerous women.

He places the gun back in its foam-padded case. “Guns lack intimacy, Hannibal said.”

Bedelia clicks her teeth, tasting something bitter. “I’ve had all the intimacy I could ever possibly desire from Hannibal Lecter.”

Yes, even more than him at this point—she’s the only person who knew what it was like to be devoured by Hannibal and live to tell the tale. “You weren’t ready to kill him before. You spoke of it like it was a matter of moral relativism—that Hannibal was only what evolution had made of him. What changed?”

“I should think that would be obvious,” she says, ice water creeping back into her tone.

“Pet the tiger often enough, you’re going to get bit eventually, Bedelia,” he tells her. “You had to have known that.”

“The bravado I showed you before was a half-truth, Will. And _you_ had to have known that.”

“You didn’t want me to see you,” he says, thinking back to those sessions, the two of them dressed up in their very best monster suits, monstering away at each other. “You wanted me to be afraid of you.”

“Yes,” she says patiently, as if he’s a schoolchild who has just grasped long division. She turns away, straightening her shoulders and steeling her spine. “When he had me there…at dinner…it was like finding solid ground after years of free-falling through the Inferno. My mind was fogged with opiates, but my heart…my soul…they saw clearly. What Hannibal does is not art, Will. It is not beautiful. When you strip the artifice and allusion away, it is simply sadism. It’s cruelty, common the world over, and it’s not very interesting.”

Bedelia’s words have the iron-clad ring of a sober, cold water truth. He’d never known anyone to speak so indifferently of Hannibal—even Jack and Alana had always treated him with a mix of horror and fascination. “You talk like a woman born again.”

“More like I’ve lost faith in a dark god. Or found a cure. Perhaps my luau with Hannibal was the strong medicine I needed.” She sighs and gets up to pour herself a glass of whisky, though it is not yet noon. She wordlessly offers him a glass, and he declines with a shake of his hand.

“You paid a high price to cure your curiosity,” he says, still appraising. Bedelia is sleek, subdued, sober, the same elegant economy of design as the Glock he just held in his hands. And just as deadly.

She eyes him over the rim of her glass. “Yes. What price will you pay?”

He shudders to think of the answer.

*

“So that’s the plan?” he asks later that afternoon. “We just walk in and shoot him?”

“The fewer movable parts the better,” Bedelia says.

What did it say that Bedelia’s plan to surprise Hannibal and shoot him in the head—no fanfare, no torture, no convoluted plotting—was probably the best plan for killing Hannibal he’d ever heard.

“I’ve been watching him. I know his movements.” She takes her iPad in hand and brings up some kind of password protected app. Immediately, the screen flashes to reveal footage from a pinhole camera, giving them a bird’s eye view of the spotless kitchen in Hannibal’s Argentine hideaway. Hannibal is there, meticulously chiffonading parsley into green confetti. There are two bleeding hunks of purple-red meat near his prep station. “Looks like he’s making steak chimichurri,” Bedelia says. “How original.”

Memories of that kitchen—and what went on there besides cooking— turn the tips of Will’s ears red with embarrassment. Him bent over the kitchen island, artisanal butter put to an unorthodox use. Hannibal kneeling before him, zipper between his teeth. “Exactly how much did you see?” he asks, voice cracking, trying very hard not to sound like a boy going through puberty.

“I saw enough,” she teases. Noticing his scowl, she adds, “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, from either of you. My interest was strictly professional.”

 _Sure_. Changing the subject, he asks, “So, when do we do this? Pistols at dawn? High Noon?”

“Friday.”

“Why Friday?”

She gives him one of those twisted, brittle smiles of hers, and he remembers again that she really is half-crazy. “Friday’s my birthday.”

“You’re treating yourself.” _He sends me greeting cards_ , she had told him.

“Quite.”

She leaves him then, alone with the iPad, so she can take her bath. He stares at Hannibal, mesmerized again by the sight of him, his hands beautiful and brutal as he prepares his evening meal. He is conflicted, he always has been. Dream Will—as he has come to think of his brainwashed self—had loved Hannibal without reservation. Now those happy memories are a poison, though his very being craves Hannibal’s attention like an addict’s veins ache for heroin.

Just as he is about to power down the iPad, Hannibal steps away from the stove, looks directly at the hidden camera, and winks devilishly.

 _I see you_.

*

The next few days crawl by with boredom. There is too much time and not enough. He helps Bedelia prepare bland meals. He reads the newspapers and magazines she has scattered around the apartment, trying to catch up on the two years he missed. He plays with Winston.

It’s Bedelia’s duel, as far as Will is concerned, and he is just the second.

They don’t talk to each other much. And they don’t have sex again either. He is both relieved and disappointed.

Every night Bedelia is the first in bed, covers drawn up to her chin. Her prosthetic leg is always tucked away out of sight; he’s guessing she hides it under the bed, but never checks. He climbs in bed beside her, and when she has set aside whatever book she has been reading, he rolls over and pulls the tiny brass chain that puts out the light. You would think they’d been doing this for a thousand years.

They fumble for each other in the dark, wordlessly grasping hands and shifting legs and arms and torsos until his body meets hers. He is equally likely to find his head resting against Bedelia’s breast as she is to want to burrow her face against his shoulder.

They are perfectly capable of discussing premeditated murder in the cold clear light of day, but their need for each other is so bizarre and unspeakable it can only be nurtured silently in the dark.

*

On the eve of Bedelia’s birthday, he finds her sitting on the bed ( _their bed_ ) polishing her grandmother’s gun. She loads the cartridge and it slides into place with a satisfying mechanical click. “The cartridge only holds six bullets—five of them are for Hannibal.”

“And the last?” he asks, toeing off his shoes before sinking beside her on the bed. His body weight shifts the mattress, causing it to ripple like water and her shoulder to brush against his.

“For me, if I fail to hit him,” she tells him matter-of-factly. “And if you fail as well.”

He hears the unspoken accusation in her words—the same accusation that had been leveled at him before. _When the moment comes, will you do what needs to be done?_ “You can deny him the satisfaction of killing you, Bedelia, but that won’t prevent him from eating you.”

“I know.” She grips the barrel of the handgun tightly, the way a toddler might hold on to a security blanket. Her shoulders start to shake. “But I won’t live through _that_ again…him…you…feasting on me, piece by piece.”

He wonders again if he should believe her when she says he wasn’t at dinner.

Bedelia wipes at tears with the back of her hand and turns to him. “Tell me there’s another way.”

Tears well in his own eyes as he recalls his mental state the night of the cliff. The way he had gone to her, yes to warn her, but more for a perverted kind of blessing. Which she had stubbornly not given. He takes the handgun away from his broken glass ballerina, setting it on the nightstand, and gives her the thing she had once withheld from him; “There’s not another way.”

Bedelia turns from him and lets out a huff of laughter, desert-dry. “Bluebeard’s Wife you called me once. I’m not Bluebeard’s Wife, Will—I’m Captain Hook. And I can feel Hannibal out there in the night, ticking away like the crocodile, waiting to come for the rest of me.”

Her dark sense of humor tickles his own. “If you’re Captain Hook, then I’m Captain Ahab. Hannibal’s my white whale.”

“Yes,” Bedelia confirms with a sincerity that breaks his heart. “And you are his.”

*

He has her twice the next morning in less than an hour. The first time, soft and drowsy, as he rocks into her, pillow-creases marking her face, just moments after waking. The second time, she rolls him over and all but fucks him into the mattress, not even bothering with a condom. Her hands press down on his chest as she rides him, nails leaving little half-moon circles, marking him. She even takes off all her clothes.

He sees her, the slenderest glimpse peeking out from her armor, glinting like gold as she takes her pleasure without inhibition—she’s beautiful.

He sits down to lunch with her. For her birthday meal Bedelia has prepared a ceviche. The recipe is so simple he could count the ingredients on one hand and the sea bass so fresh it tastes like it was pulled out of the ocean just that morning.

He spears a chunk of whitefish and pairs it with a juicy kernel of corn. “Very refreshing,” he tells her. “And best served cold.”

She takes a tiny bite and smiles to herself before setting aside her fork. “You think this is about revenge.”

He studies her through his glasses, tries not to think about the taste of her mingling with the lime and salt of the ceviche. “Isn’t it?”

She ignores him and concentrates on savoring what might be her last meal. “This is about survival. Mine and yours.”

They finish lunch together in silence and then, to his surprise, Bedelia picks up her bowl and begins slurping down the pale white juices of the ceviche. She dabs at her mouth and licks her lips. “ _Leche de tigre_ they call it. It’s considered to be very strengthening.”

He can still feel the hard sensitive flesh of her nipple in his mouth. _Milk of the tiger_. Yes, he’d been nursing on it for quite some time.

Will lifts up his bowl and drinks it all down.

*

They stand on the concrete steps outside the kennel where they have left Winston. His board is paid in advance with instructions that if they do not collect him in a month’s time he should be sent to Jack Crawford care of the FBI.

It hurts to leave Winston again. It shames him how much; he had left Molly and Walter without ever saying goodbye.

Bedelia is beside him, resplendent in her black widow’s weeds of a tailored suit and matching hat and gloves. It occurs to him suddenly who she reminds him of—with her hair pulled back like that she looks just like Eva Peron, whose picture still is plastered about Buenos Aires more than fifty years after her death.

A vague memory of a night of bad dinner theater with Jimmy Price reminds him that Eva died young. It gives him a sinking quicksand feeling in his gut.

Bedelia pulls aside her dark sunglasses and looks at him. Her clever eyes dart about, suddenly confused and shy. “I want you to know…whatever happens today…thank you. I’ve enjoyed your company.” She perches up on her high heels and plants a soft kiss on his lips. It’s dry and sweet and tastes exactly like goodbye.

She doesn’t expect to survive this. And neither does he.

*

They have timed this down to the second, and yet it’s still a shock when the heavy brass knob begins to turn, signaling Hannibal’s arrival.

He steps through the doorway, brown eyes melting into surprise. “Will,” he says warmly, rushing to greet him. Hannibal’s hands cup his face and ruffle his hair. Will is careful not to let them wander down toward his waist, where the Glock is tucked into the back of his pants.

Will turns his most frightened, doe-eyed stare upon Hannibal, trembling in his arms like a leaf in the wind. His distress is like catnip to Hannibal; Will is practically oozing it out of his pores. “There were these men…they shoved me in a car…took Winston. I was able to get away, get back to you.”

“You’re safe now, Will. Home with me,” Hannibal says gently, caressing his face. Will gives in, nuzzles against Hannibal’s cheek—it’s so warm and tender, for a moment he forgets where he is and why he’s here.

It’s a moment too long and a moment is all Hannibal ever needs.

Hannibal’s nostrils flare and his eyes burn hellfire red. “Oh Will,” he says, “you’ve made a new friend. Or should I say, an old one of mine?”

He backs away, eyes darting about, casing the spacious flat. Hannibal is preternaturally calm, a predator stalking his prey. He is lithe and jaunty and darkly amused at this turn of events—as Will had always known he would be. The gun beckons to him but Will’s palms are concrete cinder blocks, unable to be moved—he’s trapped like the deer in the headlights he was merely pretending to be only moments before.

“Ah Bedelia,” Hannibal says, pontificating as he paces the perimeter of the room, an actor in the footlights. “Age cannot wither her. Nor custom stale her infinite variety. Other women cloy in their appetites. But Bedelia, Will…she hungers where most she—”

 _Bang_. _Bang bang bang_. Hannibal’s unfinished quote is punctuated with a quartet of gunshots. An ellipsis written in powder and blood. And then silence, the loudest Will’s ever heard.

Will looks down to find Hannibal at his feet, a bullet right between his eyes. Another is caught in his throat. Blood runs through his dress shirt, staining it like spilled wine. He’s gone.

Will feels Hannibal’s absence like the great whoosh of a vacuum, a void beneath his feet threatening to swallow him whole. “No,” he moans, “no no no.” In that moment, it occurs to him that he’d never really expected Bedelia’s plan to succeed—this was _Hannibal_ after all. How could he be felled by something so prosaic as a gun? Empathy washes over him, a great churning maelstrom, and he is drowning in it as his sweaty hands grasp the gun he couldn’t bring himself to fire before. He spins it in the direction of the bathroom, from which Bedelia has emerged, pointing it directly at her breast.

Her golden weapon glimmers in the afternoon sun, cocked and ready to fire. “Put the gun down, Will,” she says calmly, _too_ calmly.

Tears leak out of his eyes and he begins to sob. He’s so alone, all alone. How can he know himself again when a part of him is gone forever. “How could you…this wasn’t supposed to happen,” he says, nonsense spilling out like bilge from a sinking ship. “I didn’t get to say goodbye…”

“I did it to save us. Remember?” She’s speaking to him like a patient, like a child. “Now, put the gun down.”

Will holds the gun, defiant. His finger trembles near the trigger.

“I don’t want to have to hurt you, Will.” There’s steel in her voice, now. But her eyes are so sad.

They stand there like statues, Hannibal spread between them. The tension vibrates in the room, a tangible thing, like a harp string that continues to hum long after its been plucked. With a keening animal howl, Will points his gun and fires squarely at Hannibal’s corpse. His two shots puff harmlessly in the air—he’s shooting blanks. He drops his gun and then falls on his knees next to Hannibal’s body, sobbing in impotent rage.

“I took your bullets, Will,” Bedelia says, lowering her weapon and walking over to retrieve his now useless gun.

“Why?”

“You’re not a _killer_ ,” Bedelia practically sneers at him for the second time.

“I was bait.”

“No,” Bedelia says, kneeling beside him. Her gloved hands close Hannibal’s now lifeless eyes, strangely tender. “You were what you have always been—the bright shiny lure he couldn’t resist.”

Will can’t bear to look anymore at Hannibal’s waxy, unmoving face, so he forces himself to look at Bedelia. “So this was a test.”

“Your brand of righteous violence is too unpredictable for my tastes.” She takes out a handkerchief and wipes both guns fastidiously. “I planned to survive you both…one way or another,” she says, making no apology.

“You would've crushed me like a wounded bird.” He certainly feels wounded, the place in his heart where Hannibal used to be hollowed out, raw and empty.

Bedelia doesn’t answer, just slips away into the kitchen, leaving him alone with his now absent friend. Will soon hears the click of the burner, smells the faintest whiff of gas.

He’s not surprised, not at all, when she returns with a carving knife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal's last words are Shakespeare's description of Cleopatra. Bedelia was right to bet on whimsy in the end. But credit for the "dressed up in their monster suits, monstering at each other line" goes to a conversation with the always insightful underground/after-the-ellipsis. 
> 
> Bedelia's gun is a real handgun, the Colt 1908, which was manufactured between 1908-1948. This fic is also the reason I now have things like "ladies vintage handguns" in my google search history. Have fun with that, NSA. 
> 
> Hannibal may be dead, but he's not exactly _gone_ gone. Expect ghost!Hannibal/memory palace Hannibal to continue to visit/plague Will in later chapters. Thank you to everyone who read and commented --your interest in this unlikely pairing keeps me going!


End file.
